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Mentoring Mr Singleman - Kim Sancreed

Mentoring Mr Singleman: A funny, feelgood, Cornish Romance set in and around a school - the perfect holiday read. by [Kim Sancreed]

I'm so pleased to be on the blog tour for this book today.



Description

A witty, off-beat romance set in Cornwall. New member of faculty Kate finds herself living below one of her colleagues in a converted engine house on the cliffs. Everyone can see they are made for each other, but he’s a little too in love with his surfing, and she’s a little too focused on her career. Under the merciless gaze of their students, Dave and Kate dance around each other through the highs and lows of a school term. Will they manage to get out of the way of their own happy ending?

Review

As the book cover says "A Cornish Romance" but I think this book is so much more and is slightly underselling itself. 

Mr Singleman is a teacher at a school in Cornwall, and a new teacher Kate catches his eye and part of his car! What ensues is an on off attraction between the two of them, the reader willing them to make a go of it, with plenty of dalliances making you doubt they could. 

A lot of the book is set within the school and with the attention to detail, it's more of a fly on the wall documentary about school life from a teachers perspective. If you are a teacher, I'm not sure you would want to read this, might be a busman's holiday, but I could be wrong. For me it brought back vivid memories of corporate management speak, training courses and of course mentoring. I loved Mr Singleman's very wry, intelligent and accurate observations on all of it. 

When I finished the book I found out the author had been a teacher, and really with the level of detail found within the book I thought they must have been. We don't just get the teacher speak though. There are the back stories of several of the pupils, and it was hit and miss throughout the book as to which side of the tracks each of them would end up on; as they all came from very different backgrounds. The school trip to London was really well written from the both the teacher and pupil perspective.

I loved all the teacher characters. I think my fave was Frances who is a little bit of a mother figure to the staff. Although I didn't like the Deputy Head who was a little creepy in more ways than one. The other thing I loved about the book was the setting and the descriptions of the Cornish land and seascape.

I'm giving this book 5 out of 5 stars. My thanks to the Book Collective for the ARC and the invite to the tour.

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